Month: September 2013

One reads staggering amounts of ignorant drivel written on just about any subject these days. But Russia takes pride of place, even in conservative publications.

They’re so desperate, for all the right reasons, about the way things are in their own country that they seek solace in Putin’s Russia – for all the wrong reasons.

For example, a friend has asked my opinion of an article published on a rightwing blog. The very first sentence told me I was in for a rough ride: “On a trip to Russia earlier this year I learned a few things.”

You learn little on a short trip to any country about which you know next to nothing. There’s no harm in this – provided you don’t think you’ve gained valuable insights. If you do, it’s unfortunate. If you then communicate such insights, it’s subversive.

So what did the author learn? “Russia is very similar to Western countries; it’s a majority white Christian nation, so it has almost the same culture as us.” He should have saved himself the cost of the trip: such revelations could have been picked up from a school primer.

Anything else? “[Russians] love their country and they are proud of their history. They are not trying to stuff their country full of immigrants or apologise for the past. And they are united as a people.”

Well, patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel to Dr Johnson, and in Russia’s case this assessment is richly vindicated.

Let’s remember that in my parents’ generation, and partly my own, the Russian state murdered 60 million of its citizens. One would suggest that there’s little to be proud of and much to repent.

The author is confusing the pathetic apologies proffered by our leaders for ‘Britain’s colonial past’ with genuine repentance for things that any decent society should abhor. Germany, for example, has repented her sins and tried to expiate them.

But Russia hasn’t repented her murders, which is understandable. After all, she’s being run by the same organisation that did the murdering, ably led in the best KGB tradition by Col. Putin himself.

As to the Russians being ‘united as a people’, this is simple ignorance, curable by a few short conversations with simple folk in villages and small towns. One suspects the author’s fluency in Russian isn’t of sterling quality, and those chaps are unlikely to speak much of anything else. So the author’s embarrassing comment is understandable. One just wishes he kept it to himself.

“A person who refuses to work in Russia will have a very miserable time… One man…, a factory worker two years before,… [is] now a senior manager in an oil company. The secret to his impressive results? Hard work.”

Here the author shows a skimpy knowledge not only of Russian society but also of his own. The welfare state, which both he and I deplore, isn’t about helping people who can’t or won’t help themselves. It’s about increasing the power of the state.

When a state does much for individuals, it feels free to do much to them. Also, by steadily increasing the number of people owing their livelihood to the public purse, the state ensures its self-perpetuation.

It follows logically that when the state’s power is already absolute in perpetuity, it has no need for any welfare. That’s why all Russian children know the phrase “if any would not work, neither should he eat” even if they are unaware of its Pauline provenance.

To give credit where it’s due, the state practises what it preaches. Even people who genuinely can’t work are starving. To be fair, most of those who work hard aren’t much better off.

For it’s not ‘hard work’ that’s ‘the secret of impressive results’ but proximity to power. Russia’s economy is criminalised from top to bottom, being run as it is by an elite formed by the amalgam of the KGB and organised crime.

People outside this elite won’t get to run oil companies. Outside Moscow and a couple of other places those working hard regard £400 a month as a princely wage. Presumably the author noticed that prices in Russia are only marginally lower than in Britain – would he like to subsist on that amount or less?

“In many ways [the Russians] are more free than us; they can largely say what they want and do what they want as long as they’re not hurting anyone. However, I strongly advise against criticising their President.”

Hence the author’s concept of freedom is compatible with a ban on criticising Putin. By that criterion, Stalin’s Russia was even freer.

Why, Russia is so free that anyone who suggests she isn’t is quietly bumped off in a dark alley or, if he’s lucky, beaten within an inch of his life.

Putin has effectively suppressed free press, and those journalists who don’t get the message suffer a gruesome fate. Over 40 of them have been murdered on Putin’s watch, and God only knows how many roughed up.

The author’s admiration for such thuggery, even when aimed at Muslim ‘hate preachers’, makes one doubt his conservatism. He describes one such cleric being beaten up or killed (he doesn’t say which) by ‘two Russian men’: “Let’s just say that’s one ‘cultural enricher’ who won’t be speaking against Christians again. Ever.”

Much as one may find such things aesthetically pleasing, the author should read up on Russia a bit. Then he’ll find that the same ‘two Russian men’ could the next day do exactly the same to Orthodox priests and rabbis.

The hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church has been an extension of the secret police since the 1920s. The last patriarchal election was contested by three career KGB agents, one of whom, Kiril, codename ‘Mikhailov’, is the current Patriarch.

Priests who preach real Christian sermons often suffer the same fate as the mullahs described by the author. Two examples spring to mind: Fr Alexander Men, hacked to death, and Fr. Pavel Adelheim, stabbed through the heart.

And attacks, often murderous, on synagogues and rabbis far outnumber those on Muslim ‘hate preachers’. Is the author aware of this? Any of it? Probably not.

That’s why he thinks Russia is “a strong Christian nation with a bright future”. It’s nothing of the sort, though I understand his frustration that neither is Britain.

The other day I suggested that Ed Miliband makes Dave look good. I was wrong. He doesn’t. No one can – not with the kind of policies Dave favours.

Actually, modern politicians don’t do policies. They do politicking. And they get away with it because voters don’t know any better.

Churchill once said that “the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Just so. There has to be something wrong with our voters, for otherwise they wouldn’t fall for our politicians’ knavish tricks.

Thus the Milibandits built up an 11-point lead in the polls on the strength of their promise to freeze energy prices. In the short term, this measure means introducing Nazi-style price controls. In the longer term it means a distinct likelihood of us all freezing in the dark. No matter. Voters liked what they heard.

Not to be outdone, Dave has unfolded two ‘policies’ that only charitably can be called ill-advised. In support Dave offered arguments that can only be charitably be called silly.

The first Conservative Party trick was introducing a £1,000 transferable tax allowance that will benefit poorer couples. In cash terms this means that a couple on the basic tax rate will be a whopping 54p a day better off. Half a Mars bar.

Even poor sods who have to struggle on £30,000 a year won’t notice the fruits of Dave’s generosity. But hey, it’s the thought that counts. Or, in Dave’s case, absence thereof.

If this sounds harsh, consider Dave’s rhetoric accompanying this latest exercise in spivery. It’s as manifestly bereft of logic as it’s full of solipsistic non-sequiturs.

First Dave declared, “I am… a Prime Minister who is a modern compassionate Conservative.” He used to say it better: “I am the heir to Blair.” In either case, what on earth does this mean?

Then for the umpteenth time Dave shouted his love for The Girl with the Dolphin Tattoo.

“Alongside the birth of my children, my wedding was the happiest day of my life.

“Nothing I’ve done since – becoming a Member of Parliament, leader of my party or Prime Minister – would have been possible without her.”

Good. Now we know whom to blame.

As a rule, a man who keeps insisting in public how much he loves his wife probably beats her in private. And a woman who tells all and sundry how much she loves her husband probably sleeps around – which may be why he beats her.

But let’s say the Camerons belie this lifelong observation by actually being blissfully happy together. How does it follow that couples on the basic tax rate must be bribed to the tune of 54p a day?

Now suppose for the sake of the argument that the Girl with the Dolphin Tattoo did sleep around, and Dave did indeed beat her for it. Would he then decide against pulling the 54p ace out of his sleeve?

I get it. Dave wants voters to believe that he’s striking a blow for all happy families like his own. He’s a firm believer in the institution of marriage.

To wit: “There is something special about marriage: it’s a declaration of commitment, responsibility and stability that helps to bind families.” Right. So the 54p a day is the cornerstone of marriage.

Well, not quite. I mean, it is a cornerstone all right but, according to Dave, not just of marriage: “And of course this will be true if you’re gay or straight – and in a civil partnership or a marriage. This summer I was proud to make Equal Marriage the law. Love is love, commitment is commitment.”

True. And marriage is marriage, which neither a homosexual ‘marriage’ nor a civil ‘partnership’ is. In fact, a civil partnership is the cohabitation of couples who refuse to make a commitment.

A marriage contract, they say, is just an insignificant piece of paper. Of course it is. Then, if it’s so insignificant, why not just sign it and be done with it?

By equalising homosexual or heterosexual cohabitation with marriage, Dave debauches this institution the way no PM has ever done in the past. He seems to think that 54p a day will undo the damage. How stupid and/or subversive can he get?

Very, is the answer to that. Witness his other darling, the Help to Buy scheme whereby the government will underwrite 95% mortgages.

Dave, you see, “… will not stand by while hard-working people struggle to get a mortgage for a house. [He is] impatient to help young people get on the housing ladder.”

“I am not prepared,” continued Dave, “to be a Prime Minister of a country with caps on aspiration.”

Caps on aspiration are indeed pernicious. But he’s confusing those with caps on instant gratification, on the desire to feed at whatever cost voracious appetites that exceed income, present or realistically projected.

Most Parisians, Viennese and Milanese live in hired flats – without any noticeable lowering in the level of their aspirations. But most Americans and Brits are prepared to enter the bondage of unsustainable, and often ruinous, debt.

Does Dave remember the 2008 crisis? The one still with us today? To a large extent it was caused by a glut of painless mortgages proffered on demand.

The next time the housing bubble Dave is creating bursts (as it always does), it won’t be the present profligate generation that’ll bear the brunt. Courtesy of the mediation of government guarantee, it’ll be the generations to come.

There’s the rub. The impoverished generations will come, but after the 2015 elections. Whereas irresponsible home buyers, whose acquisitive itch will have been scratched, will vote for Dave out of gratitude.

Barack can rival Dave for the distinction of being the true ‘heir to Blair’.

In fact, just as all American literature, according to Hemingway, came out of Huck Finn, so has all post-Tony politicking come out of Tony.

What would you say is the most essential quality for political success? Intellect? Decisiveness? Patriotism? Honesty? Courage?

If you think it’s any of these, you’re as hopelessly retrograde as I am. A modern politician not only doesn’t need any of such qualities, but in fact they can hold him back terminally.

The most, nay only, important qualification for high office these days is ‘charisma’, that is superficial appeal to the lowest common denominator of the electorate.

And specifically? Well, a modern ‘leader’, whatever his social, educational or cultural background, has to come across as a ‘man of the people’. This doesn’t mean, as it used to, that he has to love the people, empathise with them, devote his life to their well-being.

Again, such things would today be at best irrelevant and at worst detrimental. No, being a ‘man of the people’ means acting and sounding like most of them. And since modern education is guaranteed to make most voters sound like ignorant louts, modern politicians know exactly what to do.

Hence, as politicians this side of John Prescott tend to be middleclass and reasonably well schooled, their success depends on their ability to do accents. This is more akin to the talent possessed by Rory Bremner or, in America, Kevin Spacey than to the gifts of a George Canning or a John Adams.

American political machines were the first to cotton on, which is why Ronald Reagan, a man of rather modest ability, had such a successful political career. Mind you, Ronnie didn’t have to work too hard to pretend to be a man of the people: he was just that, and where he fell short his B-movie talent was sufficient to correct the deficit.

Neither Tony nor Barack (nor certainly Dave) is a natural speaker of ungrammatical jargon, so they had to work at it. Tony showed the way by dropping the aitches he was born with, though sometimes he forgot. But he got top marks for trying.

Harvard-educated Obama had to take a seemingly opposite but in fact identical route to popular appeal. If Tony dropped his aitches at the beginning of words, Barack drops his gees at the end of them.

In his excruciatingly slow and typically meaningless speech, sharing and caring becomes sharin’ and carin’, ameliorating becomes amelioratin’, and socioeconomical disadvantaging becomes… well, you get the gist.

You can’t argue with success: Barack has won two elections on the strength of his impersonation ability (no other qualifications seem to be in evidence). But there’s a risk involved.

Some people who come from the groups to which such pathetic tricks are supposed to appeal are very sharp cookies indeed. They may not sound the way a Harvard professor or an Oxford don are supposed to sound, but they know a phoney when they see one.

The actor Samuel L. Jackson is one such man. Raised by a single, working-class mother, he picked himself by his bootstraps all the way up to higher education and a successful film career.

He grew up naturally speaking the way Barack is so desperately tryin’ to learn, which is why he can see through such offensive patronising with X-ray acuity.

The star of Pulp Fiction pulled no punches: “Be a leader… Look, I grew up in a society where I could say ‘It ain’t’ or ‘What it be’ to my friends.

“But when I’m out presenting myself to the world as me, who graduated from college, who had family who cared about me, who has a well-read background, I f*****g conjugate.

“How the f*** did we become a society where mediocrity is acceptable?” asks the thespian somewhat rhetorically.

The problem, Sam, is that mediocrity isn’t just acceptable. It’s actively promoted as the essential precondition for nonentities like Tony and Barack or Dave and Dubya to grab the brass ring.

When we had statesmen rather than spivs, it was understood that prime ministers or presidents possessed superior qualities to those of your average lout. They’d then use such qualities to help the average lout have a more fulfilling life and ideally stop being a lout.

Similarly, an intelligent grown-up doesn’t baby-talk to children. Instead he sets an example of how they should sound when they grow up. This isn’t to suggest that politicians should be paternalistic – only that they ought to have respect for their office and their people.

Then there may be an outside chance that both the office and the people will be worthy of respect. Things being as they are, our spivs will continue to play their little games.

Perhaps Barack ought to take locution lessons from Jackson, or rather his character in Pulp Fiction. Why stop at dropping the gees?

I can’t guarantee the phonetic accuracy of this recommendation, but something like this will go down a treat with the electorate. Barack still probably won’t do an FDR and get a third term, but he’ll keep democracy at the level where it now belongs.

I would have definitely bet my house against it. Probably my car. Possibly even my wife (admittedly she might have had a say in such a wager, and especially its payoff).

And boy, am I glad I didn’t – I would have lost them all. For Ed and his Milibandits bucked the odds to score the greatest feat in modern British politics. They made Dave look good by comparison.

Don’t get me wrong: Dave too is perfectly capable of talking, and proposing, utter nonsense when his focus groups tell him that’s what the public wants to hear.

He too happily introduces the most asinine policies imaginable if he feels this may gain a couple of percentage points at the polls. But Dave is restrained – ever so marginally, but still – by his party, especially its grassroots.

Under Dave’s sage tutelage, the Tory party has already lost half its membership – this to the accompaniment of Dave’s triumphant elation that the attrition isn’t even more severe. A few more gems like homomarriage unearthed by Dave, and he won’t have a party to lead.

Since for old times’ sake British politics is still conducted through a party system, Dave can defy the Tory DNA only to some, albeit growing, extent. At some point a steel shutter will come clanking down: thus far, but no farther.

The Milibandits’ DNA is different. Coded into it is hatred of everything that makes Britain British – or for that matter of everything that makes the West Western.

That’s why it’s important to cut through the bovine dung of their rhetoric and see the destructive animus lurking underneath every policy they’ve ever proposed or, when in power, executed.

They talk about equal education for all as a means of helping the lower classes to move up the social ladder – hence the rout of grammar schools and the proliferation of idiot-spewing comprehensives.

As a result, those with the dirty end of the stick stuck down their throats are the very lower classes the Milibandits allegedly set out to help. Devoid of the social hoist of decent education, they remain stuck at the bottom. Social privilege, rather than disappearing, becomes chiselled in stone. Social mobility grinds to a halt.

They talk about equal medical care for all – our hospitals turn into death traps never before seen in the West, and Britain boasts the distinction of being a first-world country with third-world medicine.

They talk about helping the poor – hence the mind-numbingly stupid and subversive welfare state, making sure that the poor will not only always be with us, but that their number will continue to grow.

So never mind the well-meaning rhetoric. By their fruits ye shall know them, and those reared by the Milibandits happily combine toxic qualities with rancid taste.

Now they prattle on about changing the economy in ways that go back to the 1970s, when Britain was known as the basket case of Europe.

We don’t have to go too deep into the details, for these don’t really matter. It’s the spirit that counts, and it has spilled out of its bottle.

Many commentators have suggested that Ed’s economic goals vindicate his nickname (Red Ed). I’d suggest that it would be more appropriate to use another colour: russet (half-red, half-brown).

Divest the pre-kristallnacht Nazi Germany of its racial desiderata, and its economy would look exactly like the kind Russet Ed sees in his mind’s eye. Unlike the Bolsheviks, real reds, the Nazis were not out to transfer the ownership of the economy to the state. All they wanted was to exercise control.

Similarly, Ed doesn’t even mention the possibility of nationalising, say, the energy companies. All he wants is to introduce the Nazi-style mechanisms of wage and price controls to shift the ownership of the economy statewards de facto but not necessarily de jure.

How else is he going to keep his promise of freezing energy prices? The state can freeze the taxes and duties it imposes on energy (which wouldn’t be a bad idea), but not its wholesale price.

This, as we’ve seen in the past, can skyrocket overnight, especially since much of our energy comes from politically volatile regions. If what the energy companies pay the producers exceeds what Russet Ed allows them to charge the consumers, they’ll go bust – it’s as simple as that.

For businesses operate to make a profit, not to conform to the madness of the loony left, be that of the national or international variety. As Adam Smith explained, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their self-love…”

Deprive businesses of the profit motive, which Ed clearly wants to do to the energy companies, and we’ll all freeze in the dark. But socialists, national or international, never care how much misery they’re going to cause.

What matters to them is power, with its concomitant means to stage yet another diabolical experiment on human beings. What the Milibandits unveiled at their conference is just that: a power-grabbing gambit.

What’s deeply worrying is that Dave doesn’t hold exclusive rights to focus groups. The Milibandits use them too, and their findings must suggest that there are enough people out there to whom Ed’s subversive drivel appeals.

Be afraid, be very afraid. A couple of years from now we may well be missing Dave. Can you think of a worse fate?

It’s easy to get the impression that the Muslims are less rigorous in upholding religious tolerance than we are.

First two suicide bombers murdered over 80 Christians and wounded 120 more in Peshawar. The explosions came as worshippers were coming out of the church after Sunday mass.

Then another Muslim gang took over a shopping mall in Nairobi and shot in cold blood everyone who wasn’t a Muslim – 62 people in all. Apparently the attack was led by the white widow of another murderer who had blown himself up (alas, along with many others) on 7/7.

To the credit of the Nairobi Muslims they didn’t decide who was and who wasn’t Muslim on looks alone. Instead they gave the eager participants a little quiz, not unlike what one sees on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.

The salient difference was that there were no lifelines on offer. Answer correctly, and you may live. Don’t, and you die.

We know that exams cause undue stress, but this one must have taken the notion to a whole new level. The questions were designed to test the examinee’s knowledge of Muslim trivia.

One question was “What was the name of Mohammed’s mother?” Clearly anyone who didn’t raise his hand and shout, “Please, Miss! Aminah bint Wahb, Miss!” didn’t deserve to live.

The second question was, “Can you recite any verses from the Koran?” Apparently 62 students failed to answer correctly, possibly because they were distracted by the sound of Kalashnikovs being cocked. Or else they had somehow overlooked this vital aspect of their education.

In case you find yourself in a similar situation, you must do your homework. Now you know the name of Mohammad’s mother, you must, just in case, learn a few verses from the holy book her son dictated. Here’s a random selection for your delectation:

“Slay them [unbelievers] wherever ye find them…” (2:91); “We shall cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve.” (3:151); “Take them [unbelievers] and kill them wherever ye find them. Against such We have given you clear warrant.” (4:91); “The unbelievers are an open enemy to you.” (4:101); “Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends…” (5:51); “Slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them captive, and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush” (9:5); “Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward.” (4:74); “…If they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them…” (4:89)

This should suffice to get you out of trouble – and perhaps explain why you could find yourself in that kind of trouble to begin with.

What’s also instructive is the reaction of our media to the two carnages. It’s conspicuous that much more prominence was given to the Kenyan carnage than to the Pakistani one. This even though the latter produced more corpses.

I’m sure there must be all sorts of possible explanations for this, but I can think of only one off the top. The Nairobi victims were slaughtered because they weren’t Muslims. The Peshawar ones lost their lives specifically because they were Christians.

In the eyes of our ‘liberal’ media – not that they’d ever say this out loud, not yet anyway – people who go against the grain of public opinion by obstinately sticking to their minority faith have only themselves to blame.

Religion, you see, doesn’t really matter to our ‘liberals’, and they can’t for the life of them understand how others may feel differently. You’re a Christian, I’m a Buddhist, he’s a Taoist, they’re Muslims, what’s the difference? All religions are equally good, which is to say equally irrelevant.

So if by ignoring Ramadan you put yourself in danger, don’t count on us to help you out. If you die as a result of worshipping Jesus Christ, it’s your own silly fault – see if we care.

Now the Nairobi victims weren’t murdered because they espoused a wrong religion. They were massacred because they didn’t espouse Islam.

That calls for much more empathy – after all, our ‘liberals’ don’t espouse Islam either. So the same thing could have happened to them. As to going to Sunday mass, they wouldn’t be caught dead doing that, as it were. So they’re on safe grounds there.

One wonders how many such crimes it’ll take for our opinion formers, and those whose opinions they form, to realise that the problem isn’t Islamist fundamentalism. It’s Islam, tout court.

Quite a few, would be my guess. And then many more for this lot to review their firm stand on multiculturalism and religious tolerance.

As it is, there’s a war to the death under way. Except that one side is fighting it and the other is making well-meaning noises. So who’s going to win? If you don’t know the answer, call a friend at one of our papers.

Upset by the unjustly critical reaction his open letter caused the other day, His Holiness decided to make his meaning abundantly (abunde) clear. To that end he sent an open letter to the readers of this blog, particularly the Anglican ones (heretici Anglicani). Here it is:

Ad majorem gloriam hominis

Brethren and cistern,

[Fr Ignatius, my amanuensis, read the salutation and took exception to the last word. I told him not to be such a stickler for semantic and orthographic convention. If language does not adapt to modern times, it will collapse like a house of cards.]

Ab initio, when I was still in Argentina, I sometimes behaved in an authoritarian manner – mea maxima culpa! This misled some lost lambs to accuse me of being an ultraconservative, which is the only kind of conservative in His Creation. Now I may be a sinner, but I am not that much of one.

The accusation of ultraconservatism upset me so much that I went down the local bar in Puerto Madero to settle my nerves with a whisky. The barmaid took one look at me and said, “Mi padre, by the looks of you, a single one won’t do the job. A triple is what you need.”

I followed her advice and a miracle occurred: I immediately felt better. It was then that I realised that women ought to play a more prominent role in the Church, to the point of becoming priests, nay prelates. Ergo, I propose that my favourite doctrine should provide not only for papal, but also for mamal infallibility. [Shut up, Fr Ignatius, there is such a word if I say there is.]

As I indicated in my previous missive, the Church is at grave risk of collapsing. It is putting people off by being intransigent in its preoccupation with homosexual marriage and heterosexual abortion. Good Catholic men are leaving the Church in droves because it won’t allow them to marry one another. And good Catholic women stop believing in God because the Church denies them the God-given right to scrape foetuses out piece by piece.

Now it so happens that I became well-versed in dialectical philosophy while still a student at the Jesuit Seminary in Buenos Aires. Ergo, I know that the absence of negation is tantamount to the presence of affirmation, and nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus say that two men cannot be joined in holy matrimony, nor that women cannot abort as many babies as they wish. (St Paul is entitled to his res privata.) Ergo, they must have sovereignty over their own bodies. Absolutum dominium, as we say in these parts.

Is not the doctrine of free will as essential to the Church as the one of papal/mamal infallibility? And free will means doing as one pleases. [I thought I told you to shut up, Fr Ignatius.] Ergo, if two men wish to marry, who am I to judge them? Who am I to deny them their God-given right to exercise their free will? De gustibus… and all that.

We, the Church, cannot insist on just one way of looking at issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. Come to think of it, dialectically speaking, abortion is at base but a method of contraception, and the world is overpopulated as it is. A fortiori, by dialectically linking coitus with free will, we arrive at a new, appropriately and laudably modern, dogma: Coito [sick], ergo sum. Or else omnia vincit amor of any kind, take your pick.

It has also been brought to my attention that many good Catholics are threatening to leave the Church because of its overemphasis on the divinity of Jesus Christ. They cannot reconcile this part of our dogma with the modern world, out of synch with which the Church lamentably appears to be.

Ab imo pectore I wish to find such reconciliation, and if this means reducing a few emphases at the margins of doctrine, then so be it. Personally, I pray even when I am waiting at the dentist: “Pater Omnipotens, not another cavity please.” But who am I to tell others, ex cathedra or otherwise, how, when or to who to pray? [Yes I know, Fr Ignatius, but modern people don’t say ‘whom’. So just shut up.]

Much as it pains me to say so, you Anglicans (heretici Anglicani) are showing us the way. You already have women priests, soon you will have women bishops in Wales, with England to follow. Good Catholics keep asking me in Rome, “Holy Father, why can’t we be like the English (maiali Inglesi)?

“Nil desperandum, brethren and cistern,” I reply. “Just give me a couple of years and you won’t believe your eyes. The Church will change.” “Make sure it does, Holy Father, or there won’t be any Church. It’ll fall like a house of cards.” And who am I to tell them they are wrong?

Upset by the unjustly critical reaction his open letter caused the other day, His Holiness decided to make his meaning abundantly (abunde) clear. To that end he sent an open letter to the readers of this blog, particularly the Anglican ones (heretici Anglicani). Here it is:

Ad majorem gloriam hominis

Brethren and cistern,

[Fr Ignatius, my amanuensis, read the salutation and took exception to the last word. I told him not to be such a stickler for semantic and orthographic convention. If language does not adapt to modern times, it will collapse like a house of cards.]

Ab initio, when I was still in Argentina, I sometimes behaved in an authoritarian manner – mea maxima culpa! This misled some lost lambs to accuse me of being an ultraconservative, which is the only kind of conservative in His Creation. Now I may be a sinner, but I am not that much of one.

The accusation of ultraconservatism upset me so much that I went down the local bar in Puerto Madero to settle my nerves with a whisky. The barmaid took one look at me and said, “Mi padre, by the looks of you, a single one won’t do the job. A triple is what you need.”

I followed her advice and a miracle occurred: I immediately felt better. It was then that I realised that women ought to play a more prominent role in the Church, to the point of becoming priests, nay prelates. Ergo, I propose that my favourite doctrine should provide not only for papal, but also for mamal infallibility. [Shut up, Fr Ignatius, there is such a word if I say there is.]

As I indicated in my previous missive, the Church is at grave risk of collapsing. It is putting people off by being intransigent in its preoccupation with homosexual marriage and heterosexual abortion. Good Catholic men are leaving the Church in droves because it won’t allow them to marry one another. And good Catholic women stop believing in God because the Church denies them the God-given right to scrape foetuses out piece by piece.

Now it so happens that I became well-versed in dialectical philosophy while still a student at the Jesuit Seminary in Buenos Aires. Ergo, I know that the absence of negation is tantamount to the presence of affirmation, and nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus say that two men cannot be joined in holy matrimony, nor that women cannot abort as many babies as they wish. (St Paul is entitled to his res privata.) Ergo, they must have sovereignty over their own bodies. Absolutum dominium, as we say in these parts.

Is not the doctrine of free will as essential to the Church as the one of papal/mamal infallibility? And free will means doing as one pleases. [I thought I told you to shut up, Fr Ignatius.] Ergo, if two men wish to marry, who am I to judge them? Who am I to deny them their God-given right to exercise their free will? De gustibus… and all that.

We, the Church, cannot insist on just one way of looking at issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. Come to think of it, dialectically speaking, abortion is at base but a method of contraception, and the world is overpopulated as it is. A fortiori, by dialectically linking coitus with free will, we arrive at a new, appropriately and laudably modern, dogma: Coito [sick], ergo sum. Or else omnia vincit amor of any kind, take your pick.

It has also been brought to my attention that many good Catholics are threatening to leave the Church because of its overemphasis on the divinity of Jesus Christ. They cannot reconcile this part of our dogma with the modern world, out of synch with which the Church lamentably appears to be.

Ab imo pectore I wish to find such reconciliation, and if this means reducing a few emphases at the margins of doctrine, then so be it. Personally, I pray even when I am waiting at the dentist: “Pater Omnipotens, not another cavity please.” But who am I to tell others, ex cathedra or otherwise, how, when or to who to pray? [Yes I know, Fr Ignatius, but modern people don’t say ‘whom’. So just shut up.]

Much as it pains me to say so, you Anglicans (heretici Anglicani) are showing us the way. You already have women priests, soon you will have women bishops in Wales, with England to follow. Good Catholics keep asking me in Rome, “Holy Father, why can’t we be like the English (maiali Inglesi)?

Nil desperandum, brethren and cistern,” I reply. “Just give me a couple of years and you won’t believe your eyes. The Church will change.” “Make sure it does, Holy Father, or there won’t be any Church. It’ll fall like a house of cards.” And who am I to tell them they are wrong?

Every week I read something that makes me say, well, now I’ve seen everything. The next day I find I haven’t.

This time the star columnist of The Times David Aaronovich has come up with something truly emetic.

David, you see, has never seen a destructive New Age cause he couldn’t love. I don’t even have to mention any: you name it, he supports it.

This time it’s the ‘transgender’ cause that has made him pick up the banner. Now an old hand like me who has indeed seen, if not everything, at least most things, doesn’t have to drink a whole bottle of corked wine to realise it has turned to vinegar. One sip or, in an article, one word is enough.

In this instance, the word is ‘gender’, in the meaning of sex. Show me a man who uses it, and I’ll show you a leftie nonentity. Such a man is so scared of offending other leftie nonentities (and they do offend easily) that he’d rather offend taste, logic, decency, morality and a few other minor things. Such as 2,000 years of civilisation.

‘Gender’, David, denotes a grammatical category. What separates men from women is called sex. At least that’s what people with a modicum of taste call it.

Anyway, the case that got David going involves Bradley Manning, an American traitor currently serving 25 years in prison. While there, Bradley decided that he wanted to become a woman. Ergo, he demanded that the requisite procedures be administered while he paid his debt to society.

David ruefully admits that he started from a position of bigotry, that is from a normal human reaction to an aberration. This is something he now regrets, presumably because he had a vision.

Chelsea Manning, née Bradley, must have appeared before his eyes and asked the lapidary question: “Why do you persecute me so?” David fainted and fell off his high horse. When he came to he wrote, “When Bradley became Chelsea Manning I laughed – until the transgender truth shut me up for good.”

At this point I jumped up, punched air and cheered loudly. Alas, I was immediately disappointed. David didn’t shut up not only for good but even for a second.

Without missing a beat he tugged on our heart strings by relating several soppy stories about the suffering of transsexuals. David was deeply moved, but then it doesn’t take much to make this lot deeply moved by any perversion.

“As I’ve read more about it, it becomes apparent that there is a small group of people… who were, if you like, ‘born in the wrong bodies’. These people need our help and understanding and are as deserving of them as anyone else. But they have received none so far from me. Why not?”

I can answer that, David. Because you had normal human instincts that have now been overridden by a pernicious ideology.

A Christian would emphatically disagree that these people deserve ‘help and understanding’, in the sense of publicly financed sex-change procedures. Such people deserve love – because all people do.

If they indeed suffer, they deserve it even more – and perhaps also advice on the noble role of suffering. David is of course unfamiliar with such things, and if he isn’t he despises them, but suffering is the formative experience of our civilisation.

Every great Western thinker has written about its morally and spiritually elevating role in the development of a personality. To put it simply, without suffering there is no development and hardly any personality.

Those born with the disorder that has so excited David’s puny imagination are unlikely to find much physical happiness in life. But they’d have a head start in their search for spiritual happiness – provided the Zeitgeist weren’t shaped by the likes of David.

He then goes on to admit that the sight of a woman with a beard or a man with breasts makes him feel “threatened”. Such heartlessness is to him a deadly sin and, in the good tradition of our civilisation, he expiates it by repenting. He recognises the error of his previously normal ways.

“This recognition [made me] look my ‘transphobia’… full in its fearful face.” A lovely neologism, that. If David invented it, this knack for new coinages will get him into the thesaurus of quotations before he’s through.

Once the repentance wagon got rolling, David went on to repent his reaction “to other situations – like the wearing of the burka – in which my discomfort may be overwhelming my reason. … It is not actually a big problem in this country. Nor is it ever likely to be.”

Islamisation of Britain, a problem? Perish the thought. Of course there’s the small matter that the same chaps who make their women cover up would happily eviscerate anyone named Aaronovich, but David rises above personal interests.

Speaking of his interests, I understand David is a Spurs fan. Well, the IT worker Paul Lovell is currently on trial for corrupting the morals of a sheep next to the club’s training ground in Enfield. David ought to start a campaign for his release.

After all, the poor man was born that way. He can only find happiness in tucking ovine hind legs into his Wellies. Paul Lovell deserves help, understanding and a publicly financed flock of sheep, not prison.

And we must also take up the cause of David Aaronovich, a mindless creature trapped in the body of a columnist.

Every week I read something that makes me say, well, now I’ve seen everything. The next day I find I haven’t.

This time the star columnist of The Times David Aaronovich has come up with something truly emetic.

David, you see, has never seen a destructive New Age cause he couldn’t love. I don’t even have to mention any: you name it, he supports it.

This time it’s the ‘transgender’ cause that has made him pick up the banner. Now an old hand like me who has indeed seen, if not everything, at least most things, doesn’t have to drink a whole bottle of corked wine to realise it has turned to vinegar. One sip or, in an article, one word is enough.

In this instance, the word is ‘gender’, in the meaning of sex. Show me a man who uses it, and I’ll show you a leftie nonentity. Such a man is so scared of offending other leftie nonentities (and they do offend easily) that he’d rather offend taste, logic, decency, morality and a few other minor things. Such as 2,000 years of civilisation.

‘Gender’, David, denotes a grammatical category. What separates men from women is called sex. At least that’s what people with a modicum of taste call it.

Anyway, the case that got David going involves Bradley Manning, an American traitor currently serving 25 years in prison. While there, Bradley decided that he wanted to become a woman. Ergo, he demanded that the requisite procedures be administered while he paid his debt to society.

David ruefully admits that he started from a position of bigotry, that is from a normal human reaction to an aberration. This is something he now regrets, presumably because he had a vision.

Chelsea Manning, née Bradley, must have appeared before his eyes and asked the lapidary question: “Why do you persecute me so?” David fainted and fell off his high horse. When he came to he wrote, “When Bradley became Chelsea Manning I laughed – until the transgender truth shut me up for good.”

At this point I jumped up, punched air and cheered loudly. Alas, I was immediately disappointed. David didn’t shut up not only for good but even for a second.

Without missing a beat he tugged on our heart strings by relating several soppy stories about the suffering of transsexuals. David was deeply moved, but then it doesn’t take much to make this lot deeply moved by any perversion.

“As I’ve read more about it, it becomes apparent that there is a small group of people… who were, if you like, ‘born in the wrong bodies’. These people need our help and understanding and are as deserving of them as anyone else. But they have received none so far from me. Why not?”

I can answer that, David. Because you had normal human instincts that have now been overridden by a pernicious ideology.

A Christian would emphatically disagree that these people deserve ‘help and understanding’, in the sense of publicly financed sex-change procedures. Such people deserve love – because all people do.

If they indeed suffer, they deserve it even more – and perhaps also advice on the noble role of suffering. David is of course unfamiliar with such things, and if he isn’t he despises them, but suffering is the formative experience of our civilisation.

Every great Western thinker has written about its morally and spiritually elevating role in the development of a personality. To put it simply, without suffering there is no development and hardly any personality.

Those born with the disorder that has so excited David’s puny imagination are unlikely to find much physical happiness in life. But they’d have a head start in their search for spiritual happiness – provided the Zeitgeist weren’t shaped by the likes of David.

He then goes on to admit that the sight of a woman with a beard or a man with breasts makes him feel “threatened”. Such heartlessness is to him a deadly sin and, in the good tradition of our civilisation, he expiates it by repenting. He recognises the error of his previously normal ways.

“This recognition [made me] look my ‘transphobia’… full in its fearful face.” A lovely neologism, that. If David invented it, this knack for new coinages will get him into the thesaurus of quotations before he’s through.

Once the repentance wagon got rolling, David went on to repent his reaction “to other situations – like the wearing of the burka – in which my discomfort may be overwhelming my reason. … It is not actually a big problem in this country. Nor is it ever likely to be.”

Islamisation of Britain, a problem? Perish the thought. Of course there’s the small matter that the same chaps who make their women cover up would happily eviscerate anyone named Aaronovich, but David rises above personal interests.

Speaking of his interests, I understand David is a Spurs fan. Well, the IT worker Paul Lovell is currently on trial for corrupting the morals of a sheep next to the club’s training ground in Enfield. David ought to start a campaign for his release.

After all, the poor man was born that way. He can only find happiness in tucking ovine hind legs into his Wellies. Paul Lovell deserves help, understanding and a publicly financed flock of sheep, not prison.

And we must also take up the cause of David Aaronovich, a mindless creature trapped in the body of a columnist.

Dave has taken time off his busy schedule to defend the rights of Tottenham Hotspur fans to call themselves ‘Yids’ if that tickles their fancy.

It’s good to see our political leader occupying himself with the nitty-gritty of football chants, the literary genre in which the British comfortably lead the world. Seems like for Dave no job is too big or too small – to mess up.

For those of you that have more interesting things than football to worry about, Spurs are based in North London where they draw much of their support from the Jewish community. Moreover, Jewish businessmen are heavily represented on the club’s board.

Hence ‘Yids’, which is the Spurs fans’ not-so-affectionate nickname. This is screamed at them by local supporters whenever Spurs play away from home. The screams are usually accompanied by hissing sounds, supposed to represent gas being released into death chambers. Nazi salutes are also quite popular.

In the good Jewish tradition of being able to laugh at themselves, Spurs fans have picked up the nickname and run with it. They now call themselves the ‘Yid Army’, which the Football Association told them they mustn’t do.

The fans objected that they can call themselves whatever they like because it’s impossible to insult oneself. The argument was heading for an impasse, so Dave decided to step in.

“You have to think of the mens rea,” he declared. “Hate speech should be prosecuted – but only if it’s motivated by hate.” I haven’t often heard hate speech motivated by anything other than hate, but let’s allow this solecism to the master of the genre.

Alas, this is about the only genre in which Dave feels comfortable. Anything with subtlety takes him out of his rather shallow depth.

A few points are in order. First, persecuted minorities tend to develop defence mechanisms. One of those is describing themselves by the same hateful names their persecutors use.

This mechanism is often activated in Russia, where Jews have been persecuted and abused in one way or another throughout the country’s history. The most popular term of abuse is the word ‘zhid’ (Yid) and its numerous derivatives, such as ‘zhid porkhatyi’ (dandruffed Yid), ‘zhidovskaya morda’ (Yid snout) and so forth.

Sure enough, as a version of the Stockholm syndrome, Russian Jews often refer to themselves as ‘zhidy’, and they don’t feel offended when another Jew uses the word. So many psychological strands come together in this that one can easily get entangled.

There has to be an element of reaching for social acceptance by identifying with the majority. There’s probably another one of self-mockery. Trying to establish even a stronger bond with other victims of abuse may also come into that. Some self-hatred is also a possibility: if everyone despises me, perhaps I am indeed despicable. Keeping a brave face on is also a credible motive.

Someone afraid of being poisoned by large doses of arsenic may wish to immunise himself by taking regular small doses of the same toxin. This may enable him to survive – by internalising the threat, he’ll defang the poison being administered from outside. But make no mistake – there’s poison involved.

Note also that many American blacks, who too have suffered from abuse for centuries, routinely call one another ‘nigger’. The mechanism is roughly the same, as are its actuators. The difference between the blacks and the Jews is that no American Jew would say ‘nigger’ in polite company, whereas I’ve heard blacks call Jews ‘Yids’ or ‘kikes’ in the street. But that’s a separate subject.

For all such reasons, the word ‘Yid’, whether used by Jews or gentiles, is doubtless offensive, disgustingly so. However, it’s not the only one. The English language offers many ways of insulting people.

For example, centre half John Terry ruined his England career by calling an opponent a ‘f***ing black c***’. Of the three words, only the middle one is usable here in its uncensored form. Yet it was this, the only polite, word that got Terry in trouble. Had he called an opponent on the pitch – or anyone in the street – simply a ‘f***ing c***’, no one would have batted an eyelid.

Such words are undeniably objectionable. Those who call others offensive names aren’t nice. But this doesn’t mean that the state should step in and ban such words. Nor is it even the business of public officials to comment on such matters, one way or the other.

Just as they can’t bomb a foreign country into democracy, they can’t coerce their own people into civilisation. This particular potato is too hot for our simple-minded politicians to handle.

They would be well-advised to ask people to curb their hypersensitivity, rather than encouraging it by taking it too seriously. They won’t of course: their own power grows when they try to change human nature, even when they predictably fail.

But between us boys, the word ‘Yid’, whoever utters it, is venomous. When Jews or other Spurs fans themselves use it, it’s less toxic than when anti-Semitic louts use it. But toxic it remains.